


Maximum Potential Intensity III: Complex Variables

by StHoltzmann



Series: New Toys [7]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, F/F, I am not a medical professional, LGBTQ Character, Shameless Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 05:02:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7999546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StHoltzmann/pseuds/StHoltzmann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything hurts.<br/>Also, ghosts are assholes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maximum Potential Intensity III: Complex Variables

You half expected Holtzmann to have bounced back onto her feet by the time you reached her, but that doesn’t happen. “Holtzmann. _Holtzmann_!” Holtzmann remains crumpled on the floor and fear sweeps through you.

You kick the door shut to keep out the cold wind and rain. (The motorcycle’s just going to have to take care of itself.) Then you skid to your knees next to Holtzmann. The light on your phone lets you take a better look at her. Holtzmann’s head is resting on her shoulder; her face is pale and the left side of her face and throat are covered in bright red blood. It’s not easy to tell whether her eyes are open behind her motorcycle goggles, so you slip them up over her head (to your relief, her skull is intact). Her eyelids flutter slightly. “Holtzmann, come on. Wake up.”

“‘m ‘wake,” she mumbles, just barely audible. She lifts a hand toward her face in a shaky two-fingered salute. “Private Skippy, reporting…back to base…sir…”

“Well, stay awake,” you order, trying not to sound terrified. At least her hands seem undamaged, even if her gloves have seen better days. “What happened?”

Holtzmann mumbles something but you can’t make it out. Frantically, you try to dredge up any first aid knowledge you might have, whether it’s from hiking with friends or the emergency training everyone in the lab had to do or heck, Girl Scouts. Anything would be helpful.

There’s a hierarchy to this, right? Consciousness first. She’s mostly conscious, so check…or check-ish…Breathing. Yes. She’s breathing. A little shallow and a little fast, but breathing. Pulse…You take her hand and push up the wet sleeves under the leather. Before you even press your fingers into her wrist, you’re shocked by how cold her skin feels.

There’s a lot of swearing in your head as you wonder whether she’s going into severe shock. You have no idea how much blood she’s lost, and no way of getting her to a hospital. (The bike? You do not know how to ride a motorcycle at all, let alone through a flood. That’d just result in both of you dying.)

OK. But pulse. Yes, there is a pulse. Just like her breathing, it’s a little fast and maybe a little weak, but it’s there.

OK, she’s probably in shock, and she’s very definitely bleeding, and you have to do something about it. It’s not profuse, but…

What the hell do you take care of first?

(And why the hell did her colleagues let her leave like this?)

(And who the hell did this to her, and when can you punch them?)

Holtzmann is shuddering, and you realize you have to choose _something_ and do it. You pull off your coat and gently ease it under her, so there’s at least one layer between her and the cool floor. Then you run back to the kitchen, where you snatch up the quilt and dig around frantically until you find a haphazard stack of clean kitchen towels, a roll of paper towels, and a stainless steel lab tray. You throw your bag on a shoulder, then wash your hands as well and as quickly as you can. Time is _crawling_. Everything takes ten times as long as it ought to because you can’t see well, even with your phone propped up. What if you run back and Holtzmann is—is…You very deliberately let that thought slide away.

Deep breaths. Focus.

You run everything back over and get back down next to her. First off, you cover her with the quilt. “Holtzmann. Still with us?” You try to sound light.

Her eyelids flicker again. “Yuh. Where…where’s the fight,” she mumbles.

“There’s no fight. It’s gonna be OK,” you tell her. It’s hard to get your voice out of your clenched throat, but you manage. You get the alcohol-free hand wipes—useful for eating in your office—and a box of nitrile gloves—since they never have the kind you like in the lab—out of your bag and start to open them up. “You know where you are?”

“…home?”

“Gold star. OK, now, I’m gonna try not to screw this up,” you tell her, “but I have no idea what the hell I’m doing.”

The corner of Holtzmann’s mouth tugs up slightly. “Situation normal,” she says faintly. “All fucked up.”

You prop up the shiny lab tray; combined with your phone, it gives you better lighting. Holtzmann’s eyes are just barely open under her lashes. She’s still very pale. You need to find out where the blood is coming from, so you look more closely at her jawline (which you’ve previously spent a fair amount of time admiring). The blood is coming from the left side, where there’s a cut along her hairline. It’s not so long, but it’s uncannily sharp-edged. “Get ready,” you tell her. You wipe away as much blood as you can from around the cut, and then clean her skin and the cut with a hand wipe. “Sorry, sorry,” you whisper. Holtzmann barely flinches, and you worry that it’s less stoicism and more because she’s too out of it to react. You roll up a clean towel and press it firmly against the cut, then set a timer for ten minutes.

It’d be better if you could use your other hand to make sure that the rest of Holtzmann is OK, but you’ve had to slide your other hand under her head to keep the pressure steady and not dislocate her jaw. So now you’re crouching next to her with both hands on her face. Holtzmann’s eyes open a little more and she tries to lift her head. “What’re you…doing?”

You almost say _Flirting, really badly_ , or maybe _Playing doctor_ to see if you can make her smile, but you just can’t. “You’re hurt,” you tell her, trying to meet her eyes. “I’m trying to help. Don’t move, OK?”

“I’m not hurt. I’m just…super…” She slurs her words and you try not to show your alarm. Her eyes start to slowly close again.

“Hey, hey, hey,” you say. “You’re gonna be super again, but it’s going to take a little bit, OK? Do you feel like telling me about what you’re working on for Ghostbusters these days?”

“Ghosts are assholes,” she informs you tiredly. “Buncha assholes.”

“I’ll make a note of it.” You take a peek at the towel. Blood is seeping through it, so you carefully add another towel while keeping the pressure up. “What’re you working on to stop those assholes?”

“Got…some…deuteri—deutum…deuteri…Low energy f-fus…I’m tired. I don’t wanna stay up…lemme play hooky.”

 _Holtzmann, I’m so sorry, I swear I’m not trying to torture you_ …You don’t say that out loud. Instead, you say, “OK, I’ll talk. I’m going to tell you about some of the equipment that you’ve got laying around, and tell you what I think it does, and you can tell me if I’m right or wrong.”

“Hnnn…’cause you’re…” She trails off. Yes, because you’re a scientist, too, but you don’t want to remind her of that can of worms right now.

You start off describing the first thing you can think of, and making informed—but still basically wild—guesses as to its functions. She gives you an “uh-huh” or “uh-uh” whenever you pause, though you can’t be sure if she’s really processing what you’re saying.

How slowly can 10 minutes pass? But you keep it up, and though you have to add towels again, the bleeding is definitely slowing.

Finally, the timer goes off. One thing done. “Hey, Holtzmann. You have a first aid kit here somewhere, right? Please? I need to get a bandage on you.”

“First aid kits…are for dudes. Ahahaha…ha.”

“ _Holtzmann_.”

“Short bench…in the corner.” She gestures vaguely.

“Can you use your hand to hold this for a minute?” You guide her hand up to the towels. She mumbles assent, and you make sure she’s really holding it before you get up. “OK, I’ll be right back.”

You’re only a few steps away when you hear Holtzmann again, a note of distress in her voice. “Why’s it so dark…”

“The power’s out,” you tell her. You go back to her and put your phone down. Still no signal, dammit. “Better?” You’ll have to get by with the emergency lights. Hopefully that first aid kit is easy to find.

And it is—partly because there’s an emergency light near it, and partly because the first aid kit is on the floor, propping up one of the workbench’s legs. Typical! Luckily, nothing falls off the now-unstable bench when you grab the kit. In addition, while you were crouching down, you glanced at the emergency light and realized that they’re battery-powered LEDs. It’s obvious in retrospect, but in fairness, you’ve been distracted. You gather the ones you spot along the way as you run back to Holtzmann.

“You better have first aid kit stuff _in_ here,” you say as you pry open the lid. Thank goodness, she does. It’s a weird mix of stuff, but there are also the normal supplies. And—what’s that bottle? _Vetbond?_ You take a quick look at it and, and yell “2-octyl cyanoacrylate!” in excitement. The Vetbond is basically the same thing as surgical glue for humans. You almost cry from relief. You’d been thinking about looking for superglue, even though it wouldn’t be a great choice in this case, but now you don’t have to.

You get out what you need and take Holtzmann’s hand, which is trembling, away from the towels. You give her cold fingers a little squeeze, because it’s impossible not to, and try not to freak out completely. If she’s lost so much blood that she’s in shock, are you even doing her any good? Should you be out there banging on the doors of the other (apparently derelict) buildings? Should you take her back out into the storm and try to carry her to a hospital?

You’re trying your best to make rational decisions, but there are just too many unknowns.

“This is probably going to hurt, but we’re not going to be able to get you stitches in time, so…” You use the glue, forcing yourself not to look away and to keep going when Holtzmann groans faintly. Then you get her beautiful face bandaged and wrap some stretch bandage around her head to hold the padding.

“We need to get you warm.” To help with shock, you need to get her out of her cold clothes, get her to lie down on something more comfortable, elevate her feet, and keep her warm, to be precise—or at least that’s what you get from skimming your first aid app. “Do you think you can get up? You’re not hurt anywhere else, are you?”

“‘m _fine_ ,” Holtzmann grumbles. “Get up any time. Stop fussing…”

You throw things back into your bag, lean down, and try to help her up, but it’s pretty clear that it’s not going to work. You swear. You don’t have time to waste. In a burst of energy, you just scoop her up, bundled in the quilt, and manage to stand. She is so small. Even literally soaking wet, she doesn’t weigh very much. You can do this.

Holtzmann leans her head on your chest. “Yer warm,” she mumbles. “’s nice.” You are too stressed to even blush. Anyway, if you get her through this, sooner or later she’ll remember your last “conversation” before she left.Trying to jostle her as little as possible, you carry her into the kitchen and set her on a chair, quilt and all.

“Sorry. I’m pretty sure you should be lying down, but first we have to…well, we have to get your clothes off. They’re wet and cold. OK?” _And I don’t really want to have to cut them off,_ you don’t say.

“Flimsy excuse,” she says, slumped in the chair.

“O…K then.” You coax the jacket off one side and then the other. She flinches and you wonder two things: One, did you accidentally brush the left side of her face? And two, at what point will you be able to stop hurting Holtzmann?

You refocus and unbutton her waistcoat. She’s wearing different clothes than when she left, so she _must_ have been back at their HQ or something. _What the hell._ You get the vest off, and she flinches again. You settle her back down and start to reach for her soaked shirt. And then you choke, because there’s more blood. The left side of her shirt is stained red.

“What the _hell_ , Holtzmann,” you say angrily, because the alternative is falling apart, and you can’t afford to do that just now.

“J—jillian’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day,” she says, shivering.

“No shit.” You open the shirt as fast as you can without putting stress on her side, losing a few buttons along the way. There’s a longer cut near the bottom of her ribcage. It doesn’t look deep, and it’s not bleeding freely, just slowly oozing blood. And there’s actually a bandage inside her shirt. It must have gotten so wet that it came off.

Maybe something happened, after she was presumably treated at the firehouse HQ, that reopened the fresh injuries—which would be good, in a way, if that means she’s spent a lot less time bleeding than you were imagining. You get the oozing stopped and the cut cleaned, glued, and bandaged as fast as possible. Then you strip off your gloves and remove her soaked cotton bra. _So_ not how you’d pictured that going, even if it’s never going to happen in the good way now.

“Trousers,” you prompt Holtzmann, and you get her out of slacks and underwear. She tries to help, but she’s uncoordinated. You dry her off as well as you can, and then carry her to the futon. Laplace hops out of the way and then comes to curl up next to her. You cover her up, looking up how to treat shock again in your app in your other hand. But as you swipe through it, you stop on one screen and wonder. Maybe Holtzmann isn’t in “hypovolemic shock” after all—maybe it’s mild hypothermia, which would be a lot less alarming. Riding home in the wind and rain on her motorcycle and getting soaked under her jacket somehow could do it.

Getting her warm and comfortable wouldn’t hurt either way.

“How am I going to warm you up?” you say to yourself. If only you knew what she’d used to dry her hair that one time—but then again, it’s probably something totally unstable, and too hot to be used directly on her skin. You pull another blanket over her head and make sure she’s tucked in up to her chin.

“Chunk or two of potassium, tub of water…” suggests Holtzmann. “Good times.”

“That is literally the worst idea, barring anything nuclear-isotope-related.”

“Coffee,” says Holtzmann.

“Less terrible, but sorry, can’t do it. Caffeine is bad if it’s shock, and hot liquids are bad if it’s hypothermia. The app says so.”

“Coffeeeee,” Holtzmann repeats. She pulls a hand free of the blanket and points with a shivering finger. “Coffee, in the wardrobe. Gotta…get back to work. You’re slowing me down. Th’ tetraquark…electroweak sym-…sym—“ Her voice trails off and you make sure her hand is back under the blanket.

Muted, confused Holtzmann is so unlike irrepressible, brilliant Holtzmann that it’s making your heart hurt. You eye the wardrobe for a moment. You haven’t actually looked in there yet, and who knows, there could be something useful in there. When you open the doors, you’re surprised to see an elaborate device that you guess could, in theory, be used for making coffee. It takes up almost the entire interior of the wardrobe, which explains why most of Holtzmann’s clothes are on the floor. More surprising, though, is the fact that it has a blinking green light.

It has power.

“Holtzmann. Did you really route more generator power down here just to run your _coffeemaker_?”

“Priorities, y’know…y’getting me a cup…?”

“No, I’m going to get you something better, thanks to your subconscious.” You lean over the apparatus. There’s a round hole cut in the back of the wardrobe, giving access to a power outlet. You yank out the coffeemaker’s plug, plug in the space heater, and move it closer—but not too close—to Holtzmann. The heat is going to diffuse rapidly in the warehouse, though. Without doing any actual calculations, it’s obvious that the lab space is too big and too open. So you spend a few minutes scrounging for cardboard, polyethylene bubble foil, and biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate, or what normal people would call Mylar. With a lot of duct tape (unsurprisingly very easy to find), you quickly patch together a kind of dome to keep the heat trapped around the futon.

“Is that helping at all?” you ask.

Holtzmann blinks at you. “Feels weird, but good,” she says. She looks a little more alert.

“Did you…did you lose a lot of blood earlier?”

She shakes her head. “Not so much. I’ll—I’ll tell you what happened later.”

 _Will you be speaking to me later?_ you wonder. “Let me check to see how you’re doing.” You start to touch her cheek, but then switch to her forehead. She’s still a little cooler than she ought to be. “I’m going to use that HERF gun of yours to heat up some water,” you say. “Stay awake and point me toward some rubber bladders or something.” Holtzmann manages to point you toward some containers to fill, and you successfully deploy the HERF gun.

“I’m…going to have to open the blankets for a bit, sorry,” you say, awkwardly. “I’m wrapping these up and I need to put them on your…neck, chest, and groin, or so this app says. I’m hoping that’ll get you out of the d—”

“ _DANGER ZONE!_ ” Holtzmann finishes, and smirks at you. “Simple and low tech,” she observes, and you nod. “Isn’t the _traditional_ approach even more low tech, though?”

It takes you a moment to realize she’s talking about the naked-together-for-warmth cliche. That is a last resort, as far as you’re concerned, but at least Holtzmann’s feeling up to flirting. “I’m going to forget you said that, because…” You can’t meet her eyes. Has she forgotten about earlier?

“Just screwing with you,” says Holtzmann. “Reflex.” She winks.

You…try to focus. Opening the blankets gives you a chance to make sure she’s not _too_ warm and that the injury on her torso isn’t getting worse. To your relief, while the bandage is a bit stained, the bleeding has clearly stopped. You arrange the warm water bottles while trying to avoid looking at her body, which is not easy. Now that you’re not hyper-focused on the cuts, you can see some new and old bruising here and there, and traces of scars. Some of the scars are old enough that you guess they must have come from her scientific research, building things and so on, rather than ghostbusting. You want to touch them and kiss them.

She’s so strong, and so amazing, and so tough, and so ridiculous, and so damn fragile.

After Holtzmann is wrapped up again, you dig out the Ovaltine and make a half-mug of it—just warm, not hot, like the app says.

“I’m going to stack some pillows behind you so you can sit up a bit. Do you think you can hold this?”

“That’s what she—uh. Yes, I think so.” Holtzmann takes the mug without any fumbling, and you can see that her hands are shaking much less. You watch her intently, trying to ignore the fact that your own hands are starting to shake now. You’ve been running on adrenaline since the door opened, and you still feel like there are icy claws in your heart. Every time you turn away to do something and then see Holtzmann again, everything hurts. Your emotions are a jumbled wreck.

Trying to hold it together is taking an increasing amount of your energy, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever it takes until you know that she’s not going to … to not recover.

Holtzmann demands a refill, and you give a sigh of relief. To your untrained eye, anyway, she’s looking a lot better. You bring the refilled mug back and sit on the floor next to the futon, to keep an eye on her. For an hour or two, you try to keep up a light conversation—about Laplace, about her coffee machine, about snacks in tubes—and give her some water to help her rehydrate.

“I’m bored,” Holtzmann announces, “and you won’t let me cat-nap. Guess it’s time for a story. Also, I’m getting this thing off.” She pushes the blanket back from her head, but she doesn’t object when you pull it around her shoulders. With her hair visible, even if it’s messier and less gravity-defying than usual, she looks a lot more like herself.

“So, no shit, there we were,” she begins, and she narrates what was apparently a very exciting and unusual battle with a pack of Class VI…things. You’re not really clear on what they were, but they definitely had physical presences, and they definitely had razor-sharp claws. “At first I was like, cool! Never seen that before! But they just wouldn’t go down. Totally uncooperative. And the weather…it was Whack-A-Mole in a carwash with blindfolds. But! I have this sweet new multi-trap, see, and…” The rest is half brilliance and half patent nonsense, but it’s Holtzmann. You’re pretty sure she’s totally lucid at this point.

“That’s not the whole story,” you object. “What happened _to you_?”

Holtzmann rolls her eyes. “I might’ve come in a little hot. They got too close. Got the job done, though!”

You try to repress a shudder. “Coming in hot” was probably your fault; Holtzmann must have still been angry with you when she arrived.

“And afterwards?”

“Patty and Erin can be real scolds! Abby’s worse. After she yells at you, she just _stares_ at you, with _those eyes_. Like, ‘how could you?’ BLAHHHH.” Holtzmann pulls a genuinely ridiculous face, and then tries and fails to hide the wince that it causes. “Quick patch job, back to HQ. I changed, put some more pressure on and some dry bandages and blah blah blah. And then I told them I was outta there, and they _flipped_ ,” Holtzmann says in an aggrieved tone. “Even though I made sure they couldn’t get another look at _this_ under my helmet and _this_ under my jacket!”

Picturing this scene, of a wounded Holtzmann concealing her injuries in order to come back here, is giving you actual physical pain.

Holtzmann continues, “Told ‘em I had to make sure Laplace was OK, and…and that I’d left, ummm…an unstable experiment going. Aaanyhoo, long story long, the ride home sucked, I hit a stealth underwater pothole, dumped my bike, landed kinda hard in the water, hauled it back up, and then…actually, I don’t remember, but next thing I knew you were bugging me to wake up.”

“Why? Why didn’t you stay at HQ? You shouldn’t have gone out. Holtzmann, you could have died. _Actually_ _died_.” You try not to sound as upset as you feel, but you don’t think it’s working.

“I…didn’t want to leave you here alone, in the dark and the storm,” she says, looking down. You freeze. She came back _for_ _you?_ Your chest feels tight. “And I had to find out…” She looks at you for a moment. “I don’t suppose I dreamed earlier.”

Oh. It’s time. You stand up, brushing your head on the top of the dome you made. “No. But right now you should just try to feel better, and I’ll leave when—“

“Nice try,” Holtzmann says. “No points. Time to rip this bandage off, kid. You know way too much about…” She gestures around the warehouse. “About the good stuff. Shoulda put two and two together…I figured you were just sharp, and you _are_ , but also, yeah. A colleague, not a research subject. En route to the bust, I dug that lecture out of my brain. You do good work.” You can’t enjoy the unexpected compliments, because you know what’s coming next.

Holtzmann chews on her lower lip for a moment. “You were about to drop the other anvil. Which is, what? Academic espionage? Or are you working for, like, the ghost Illuminati?”

You swallow. “No…but besides not disclosing our connection, I did lie to you, and don’t worry, I know it means we’re done, although I don’t want us to be done, but I realize that’s how it has to be, and…”

“Jiminy cricket. Just spill.” Holtzmann fidgets under the blankets.

You’re a knot of thorny feelings. Deep breath: just get it over with. “I always checked the box that said I was emotionally impartial, and that wasn’t 100% true from Day 1, and it got less and less true, but at first I was just in denial; I thought it was just a silly crush and it would go away, and then by the time I realized it wasn’t just a crush, because you’re brilliant and funny and your brain is always, always on and I love how you dance and I have no idea how you look so good all the time—by then it was too late, I was afraid to say anything, because I didn’t want to leave, and because of that I’ve ruined your experiments and contaminated your data, and I really _enjoyed_ every single test we did, but more and more all I wanted was just to kiss _you_ , actual human you, and touch your skin, and taste you, and I’m sorry, you have every right to be angry, and—“

Holtzmann wriggles a foot out from under the blankets and hooks it around the back of your knee. You stagger in her direction and try not to fall on her, but she’s got you, and she pulls you down next to her with her right arm.

Holtzmann looks into your startled face and says, “You know what I was gonna say? I was gonna tell you we had to end the research, ‘cause three days ago, I realized it’d becomean excuse. And that’s not cool.” You’re practically nose to nose, but she breaks eye contact and stares over your shoulder. She takes a breath, closes her eyes, opens them, and then rapidly says, “It took Abby and then Erin and Patty to show me what love is, and what a family’s love can be, but just like exotic matter, when you think you’ve got a handle on one kind, along comes another, and I—I’ve discovered a new one. And I like it, and I want to learn more about it. I dunno who’d be able to put up with me _all_ the time, but if you want to hang around indefinitely, I’d be extremely in favor of it.”

Your heart is trembling. “…You better not be screwing with me, Dr. Holtzmann.”

“Screwing _with_ you? We don’t need that preposition there, do we?” Holtzmann’s blue eyes are full of mischief. She reaches up with her right hand and pushes it into your hair. “There’s a hypothesis that I need to confirm.” She pulls your face to hers and kisses you slowly, and it’s like your heart explodes. Her tongue slips into your mouth and you can hardly stand the electricity, but you don’t want her to stop.

You kiss her back as carefully as you can. She kisses you harder and you lean into it, but after a moment, lips tingling, you pull back slightly, and whisper right against her mouth: “If you reopen those cuts I’m going to murder you myself.”

Holtzmann’s nose crinkles as she laughs. “You’re going to have to do most of the heavy lifting,” she informs you. She reaches her right hand up to you and caresses the nape of your neck, your throat, your collarbone, and then down to your breasts. She runs her thumbnail over each nipple. Her nails are short, but still more than enough to make you bite your lip. “I spent a _lot_ of time not thinking about you. Your mouth is just as great as I was totally not imagining it was. This merits further investigation.”

“I’m not sure this is medically correct,” you protest weakly, already more aroused than ever. “We should probably be getting you into some warm, dry clothes.”

“Au contraire. These scratches are nothing—I’ve had worse—and I feel plenty warm now. I got a _fever,_ and you’re the _cure._ ”

“Could you be a little cheesier?” You roll your eyes, but you’re grinning. “I’m not sure it’s OK, though…”

(Laplace wriggles out of the covers, gives both of you a disgusted look, and stalks off.)

“Doctor’s orders. Doctor _Holtzmann’s_ orders.”

“Hey, I’m a Doctor too, y’know.”

“Dammit. Well, a) my house, my rules, and b) shut up. Take it allll off.” Holtzmann waves her hand in your general direction, and you’re pleased to see that it’s not shaking anymore.

You do as you’re told and sit down on the futon, facing Holtzmann. She looks you over and pretends to adjust the glasses that she isn’t wearing. “You look different now.”

You furrow your eyebrows at her and she explains, “Because you’re _you_ now.”

“And yours now,” you venture. And oh, then her dimple is back, deeper than ever. You lean forward and kiss it, and then the little mole beneath her right eye; her delicate, fragile eyelids, and her lips. Then you gently touch her cheek and and her lips. Every time your fingertips touch her, you feel a spark that travels from your skin to your heart, and then down deep inside.

“That’s supposed to happen, right?” asks Holtzmann.

“I’m glad you feel it too,” you answer. You’d really like to touch the rest of Holtzmann, but she has to stay covered up.

Holtzmann seems to catch on to what you’re thinking. “Allow me,” she says. She runs the back of her hand over your cheek and reaches around toward your back.

“No straining!” you warn her. “And keep that other hand under the blankets so you’re not moving that side.”

“Ughhh, _fiiiine.”_ Holtzmann gives you a dramatically exasperated look, but then brushes her knuckles against your chin and draws you toward her. She turns your head so your ear is right against her lips, and then she whispers, “We’re gonna take it _real slow._ ” She licks your ear, agonizingly slowly, _alllll_ the way up from your earlobe.

“I…I think I melted,” you gasp.

“We’ll get to your gooey center later,” she says. “And next time, I’m going to find out how many licks it takes to get there.”

“You are a cheeseball,” you say, without any heat to it. “The best cheeseball.”

She arches an eyebrow and gives you a lopsided smile. “Lean over me. I want to see what else I can investigate with my oral muscular hydrostat.” Holtzmann catches your wrists with her right hand, and holds them against the wall behind her head, bringing your breasts closer to her face.

“Don’t—don’t hurt yourself,” you manage to say. This is all terribly irresponsible and…

“I promise you, on the grave of St. Ada Lovelace, I’m not gonna do anything stupid. I want to heal up ASAP. I have plans.” She nuzzles your breasts. “To be clear, plans involving you.”

“Oh…good.” You’re glad you’re not standing up, because your knees would have given out by now. “I’ll…make sure you don’t have to strain.”

Holtzmann introduces her tongue to your breasts. She doesn’t start with the nipples, but goes around the full surface of each breast first. There aren’t any special nerve endings there, but it doesn’t matter: it feels phenomenal. When she does get to a nipple, she starts with gentle flicks using the tip of her tongue. Then she moves into firm, slow strokes, and next thing you know she’s got her whole mouth on it. She sucks at it a little, until your nipple is sensitive and flush with blood, and then she grazes it with her teeth. You’re having trouble holding your head up; every touch is electric, and it’s building up. When she bites your nipple, you cry out, and she looks up at you to make sure you’re OK. What she sees must please her, because she grins wickedly and goes in for another nibble. By the time she’s moved to the other one, you’re shaking from both the effort of holding yourself up in the right place, and from the ecstatic feeling suffusing your body.

Holtzmann releases your wrists and you pull away carefully. With a contented sigh, you sit back.

“Oh, you didn’t think we were done, did you?” Holtzmann asks. She takes a sip of water and smiles at you sunnily. “Scoot over here.”

You scoot. Holtzmann looks you over, following her gaze with her hand, from your face to your waist, thighs, and legs. You feel yourself blushing.

She beckons you with a finger and you lean over into a set of extremely slow, extremely deep kisses that leave you feeling dizzy. “We—we need to do more of that, all the time,” you say.

“Carpe diem,” says Holtzmann, and you return to the sweet taste of her mouth.

Finally, she pushes you back a little with one finger. Next thing you know, that finger is on your lips and in your mouth. There’s no reason why that should feel as good it as it does, but feels undeniably, addictively good. You lick her finger (and mentally deduct points from your dream, for not being a tenth as good as the real thing) and she smiles.

You close your eyes for a moment, and Holtzmann takes that opportunity to run her fingers down your chest, over your spine, and down between your legs. “Lean back a little, why dontcha,” she suggests, and you waste no time leaning back on your elbows. “Better.”

Holtzmann takes her time, gently running her fingers around your outer labia. It feels so good and right, but you’re starting to get anxious for her to finally actually get her fingers into you. You wriggle a little, but she makes a _tsk_ ing sound. “We don’t have the full menu tonight, so no rushing,” she says.

“It’s not what I’d pictured, true, but it’s still … so great.” Stringing words together is not your strong suit at the moment.

Holtzmann waggles her eyebrows at you, without stopping her fingers. “What else did you picture?”

“So much…but I’ve been imagining you fingerbanging me for a long time.”

Her grin grows wider. “Next on my itinerary,” she says. “Fingerbang you, for a long time.”

“…”

She slides two fingers down either side of your inner labia. When she finally slips one and then two inside, you close your eyes. She’s moving so slowly, taking her time as promised. Her thumb lightly ghosts over your clitoris, and you want to ask her to touch it harder and move faster. When you open your eyes, the lazy smirk on her face tells you that she knows what you want. She keeps going, gradually and almost imperceptibly increasing the pressure.

“You want me to move this along?” Holtzmann drawls.

You nod, licking your lips.

“Then give me a hand,” she says. “Do something about your nipples. They’re like a button labeled DO NOT PRESS—all I want to do is touch.”

You lean on one elbow and touch your own breasts. Holtzmann nods approvingly. Without taking her eyes off of you, she turns the dial up to 11: her thumb presses into your clit, moving in a smooth, fast rhythm that matches the strong thrust of her fingers. It doesn’t take long until you feel the rush beginning. Holtzmann has apparently decided not to draw things _too_ much; she keeps her rhythm going as you pant harder. Your muscles tighten and you feel your whole body flushing.

“Come for me,” Holtzmann says in a low voice that you’ve never heard before.

And you do, quivering around her fingers and gasping, “Holtz. Holtz!” Warmth spreads inside of you and you ride the climax until Holtzmann’s strokes slow gently and taper off.

You lean over her and kiss her before she can say anything else. “You’re amazing, Holtzmann.” A couple of locks of hair have fallen into her eyes, but other than that, she looks healthier than she did when this started.

“Ah, babe, I get hot when you say my name—especially like you did a minute ago—but when we’re here, it’s Jillian.”

“Anything you say, Jillian.” You rest your head, very gently, on her lap. She reaches down and caresses your hair.

“Keep in mind, that was literally one-handed.” Holtzmann laces her fingers together and cracks her knuckles cockily. “Imagine the fireworks when I’m operating at full capacity again.”

“I want a chance to return the favor…” You run your finger down her arm wistfully. You both know that now would not be a good time.

“And I wanna see what you’ve got under the hood,” Holtzmann says. “Later. Tomorrow: I wash up, we have a big breakfast, and I tell you about our Halloween party, which you’re gonna be at. You’ll meet the gang!”

“I have questions. First, you mean ‘I help you wash up,’ RIGHT? Second, breakfast? Made out of what, Pringles?”

“You’ll see,” she says.

“Right. Thirdly, um, how are you going to tell your colleagues that we know each other?”

“Honesty is the best policy.” Holtzmann appears to be enjoying your resulting blush way too much. There’s a long pause before she adds, “You were helping me with a research project.”

“…Fair enough,” you admit. And now you’re feeling sleepy. “I think you’re going to be OK, Hol—Jillian. It should be fine if you go to sleep now.”

“I’m looking forward to that way too much. It’s creepy.” She kicks the water bottles out from under the blankets, then lifts the blankets up and beckons to you. “But there are some bonuses.”

You have a moment, just a moment, to actually look at Holtzmann’s body, without the fear of earlier: her breasts, her stomach, her thighs and legs. All beautiful, and all Holtzmann. “I’m not saying no to that, but you better kick me out if I bump into your war wounds.”

“I’m not kicking you out of anywhere,” she says. You slide in on her right side and rest your head on her shoulder. She pulls the blankets over you and for a bit, you just savor the delicious feeling of the length of her body along yours. If either of you were even a tiny bit less exhausted, there’s no way you’d get any sleep.

“Oh, I forgot: there’s also the Halloween afterparty,” Holtzmann says drowsily.

“Who’s at that one?”

“Just you…and me…and maybe some new toys.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for coming on this wild ride with me! I wouldn't have made it if not for your comments and support. Writing out-of-it Holtzmann was extra difficult, and I don't know if it worked, but (much like the dodgy medical details in the story) I tried.
> 
> It's possible I'll extend the series at some point (there's that Halloween afterparty, for one) but probably not soon. I have non-fanfic writing I'm supposed to be doing! I hope the wrap-up here is satisfactory...
> 
>  
> 
> \- ERRATA -
> 
> See what [potassium does in water here](https://youtu.be/ANH-v-jd9PQ?t=1m4s). Bad Holtzmann, no cookie!
> 
> Also: I made a soundtrack for the series, which you can listen to [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI2lGZPTK6Rfy9PW9f_WK-cyLSrDq61FT). (Sorry, Spotify hates me.)


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